Unable to play, please help

from Sins Forums

Hi,

 I recently tried the demo and loved it. So, I went out and bought the full game at the store.Installed and everything went great with that, no problems. I start the game and get through the loading scenes and the begining of the game cinematic movie, but once the movie is over, the game crashes my whole computer. Black screen that never goes away until I reboot. I checked the forum for any help and updated my drivers like most said. Still won't play after the main loading movie. I'm stuck and would appreciate any help possible.. . dying to play the game!!

Thanks alot..

technical
16,765 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Did you uninstall the demo first?

Also, make sure SoaSE is patched.
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Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Yes I unistalled the demo first. I also have patched the game
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
What video card and exact driver version do you have? If you got the drivers anywhere but from nVidia/ATI/Intel, they may not actually be the latest.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I have ati radeon x1650 pro. I have the latest 8.6 catalyst driver. I did run driver genius pro edition and it did find 3 out of date drivers.Told me all other are up to date. Realtek was two of them that were out of date. I have downloaded and updated thos two and driver pro says they are now updated.. The third one says that it is the Ati SMBus driver. Have looked EVERYWHERE online and can't find the latest SMBus driver. Even on ATI/AMD website. Driver genius pro said it is the 8.6 as of 6/20/08 driver. My catalyst and all other ati drivers are ver 8.6. But not the ATI SMBus.. sorry, hope i'm making sense
dying to play this game!!! please help
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Ok, lets try and get it running in windowed mode so we can see if there's some error message appearing in the background. Open up the file user.setting in notepad and change the line that says VideoIsWindowed FALSE to VideoIsWindowed TRUE (the location of the file is below).


Vista:
C:\Users\your username\AppData\Local\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting

XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\your username\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire\Setting

Please note that some of these directories are hidden by default. To unhide them, go to Control Panel -> Folder Options -> View and set yourself to view hidden files and folders.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Ok I changed it.. go ahead and start the game?
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Did the same thing, crashed my whole pc once it got to that same point. There was no error message.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Did the game open in a window after you made the change? If so, it shouldn't be able to completely block you out of the rest of the machine even if it went unresponsive. If that is happening then I'd expect there's something worse wrong than just the game.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Yea the game open in a smaller window that didn't take up the entire screen.

What could cause that lock up? ALL my other games run great. All of them are newer games and run on higher settings of graphics. I beat all of the minimum req for SoaSE and match or beat most of the recommended req.

Thanks for taking the time to help me...its much appreciated.
CAN'T wait to play it!!
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Okay, so now I uninstalled it,restarted, and re-installed. Now I got a "Saved Minidump". When I try to run it again, I get a minimized bar at the bottom that when I click it, it doesn't do anything but dissapear for a second. Driving me crazy..lol.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
That's progress, at least. If you send in the dump file to [email protected] they can analyze it and tell you what you need to do to fix it if it's something on your machine. The dump will be in:

XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp\Sins Dump

Vista: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\Sins Dump


Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I think the problem was that after I re-installed it, I hadn't patched it so thats why the minidump file was created. After patching it, the game is back to the same thing, crashing entire pc at the end of the intro movie. Can't figure this out!!
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
At this point then I'm not sure what more to do, so I'd suggest contacting [email protected] either way.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Tankdogg26,

Sometimes uninstalling the video driver completely helps in clearing out "old" driver data.

something to try:

1. go to "add/remove programs" and uninstall your video driver.

2. go to "device manager" and actually uninstall your video card.

3. reboot the machine, wait for it to "detect" your video card, then re-install the latest ATI drivers. Then reboot again.


Something else. I help out in several flight-sim communities as well and one issue that has been plaquing these communities is intro-movie-crashes (ie. the gamer never gets to see the main game title screen)

One culprit has been a certain video codec called DDFshow which can either be installed by itself or along with other codecs from a codec pack (ie. like the DivX codec-packs etc.) Once this codec is removed, everything works as it should.

Check into it and post back.

thanks,

the Monk
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Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
THE MONK.......YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!!!!

Did what you said (#1-#3) and it runs great!!! I even turned off window mode and it runs perfect!!! Haven't turned on opening cinematic yet cause i'm scared to mess up a working thing(lol).

Once again, MONK IS THE BEST EVER
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

tankdogg26
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

Just glad I could help! Happy gaming....  :D